{"id":5749,"date":"2010-06-17T03:00:16","date_gmt":"2010-06-17T08:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=5749"},"modified":"2010-06-17T03:00:16","modified_gmt":"2010-06-17T08:00:16","slug":"no-you-di-unt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/5749","title":{"rendered":"Sigh"},"content":{"rendered":"

iPhone city San Francisco is first in U.S. to demand radioactivity warnings on mobiles<\/a><\/p>\n

The home city of the iPhone has passed a law requiring warning radioactivity warning labels on new mobiles.<\/p>\n

San Francisco retailers will soon have to provide information on the specific absorption rate (SAR) of all handsets stocked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Repeat with me: “Radiation” and “radioactive” are not the same thing<\/font>.
\nThe specific absorption rate in question is of radiofrequency radiation, which is non-ionizing, and in no way implies that the source is radioactive (i.e. comes from a spontaneous nuclear reaction), because it doesn’t.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it’s the Daily Mail<\/em>. They apparently handle science no better than Robert Green handles weak shots-on-goal by Americans. (Bang!)<\/p>\n

As far as the legislation goes, I think it’s antiscience being sold as informing consumers. But what information is being provided? I think specific absorption rate is being abused here, because it’s not being explained. If I have a mass of 100 kg, does a phone with an SAR of 1.6W\/kg mean it is emitting 160 Watts? And for a user who has a mass of 70 kg, the power magically drops to 112 Watts? No. SAR is measured using a calibration standard of one gram of tissue (in the US; in Europe it’s 10 grams) meaning the gram of tissue absorbs 1.6 milliwatts of radiation from the source, under some geometry. The actual power emitted by a cellphone is of order a Watt. But even that information is almost useless without context; the human body radiates somewhere around 800-900 Watts<\/a> in a more-or-less blackbody spectrum. Is that a cause for concern?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

iPhone city San Francisco is first in U.S. to demand radioactivity warnings on mobiles The home city of the iPhone has passed a law requiring warning radioactivity warning labels on new mobiles. San Francisco retailers will soon have to provide … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,24,39,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antiscience","category-body","category-journalism","category-physics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}